Hekt - Forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIlUb-UJv5M

pre-album single "Baby" is probably my favourite track here - a propulsive, squelchy groove with an elastic spiralling vocal sample.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUWrEqUn0jM

"But I Can't Really Show You" starts as dreamy ambient pop before collapsing into a mess of sludgy dubstep grind and bouncing trance synths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzr9JotOjWA

"Forever" the album's title track is a melancholic perculating collaboration with Smerz but they're very much the guests and not the stars.

There's some really obvious influences at work here - SOPHIE and Hudson Mohawke are the obvious sound design inspirations given this is released on the Numbers label, but there's a pop softness that reminds of Cashmere Cat and a playfulness that reminds me of Two Shell, and the trance-adjacant production made me think specifically of ILM favourite "Keflavik" by Kasper Marott.

I listened to this while on a bus journey to work yesterday and it made perfect sense as city music - the vocals feel less like songs and more like snippets of stories, the way you overhear drama in public, while the sense of perpetual motion and constant energy feel like the movement of a busy, bustling metropolis. It made me think of Burial's first two albums - not sonically or texturally, but the way it uses sound and plays with voice to capture a sense of a specific environment.

It feels very 2026 and I imagine I'll be embarassed by how deeply it has won me over in a few years but it's one of the most interesting dance-music albums I've heard in a long time.

I really like Hekt, that super digital FM-y synth design that sounds like melting plastic.

This first EP is still my favorite though: https://hektttt.bandcamp.com/album/lens

this album sounded so great this week when it was sunny

"but i can't really show you" is wonderful, reminds me of glass swords except everything's rounder, will have to listen to the album